Name: Second Stock
Ingredients: Bones or meat from first stock; 1 sprig parsley; 1 sprig thyme; 1 turnip; 1 carrot; 1 onion; 4 quarts water

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Second Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Place the bones and meat in a large pot with 4 quarts of water.
Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 3 hours.
Add the parsley, thyme, turnip, carrot, and onion, then continue to boil for 2 hours longer.
Strain the stock and use as needed.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bones or meat from first stock: Release gelatin and savory flavor into the water during long simmering.
Turnip: Adds mild sweetness and earthy aroma to the stock.
Carrot: Contributes natural sweetness and body to the stock.
Onion: Adds savory depth and aroma as it cooks down into the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, thyme, turnip, carrot):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, thyme, turnip, carrot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.